San Francisco’s Department of Aging and Adult Services is holding a Town Hall meeting to gather input from low-income seniors and people with disabilities on the expected effects of forcing these people into managed care through Blue Cross or the San Francisco Health Plan. One or the other of these plans would manage not only people’s health services but also the social services that enable them to live in the community and not in institutions.

The following is an article from the SF Gray Panthers September 2012 newsletter:

Under pressure from state budget shortfalls and the Obama Administration, California is rushing headlong into a cost-saving experiment of forcing 1.2 million low-income seniors and people with disabilities on both Medicare and Medi-Cal into “managed care.” It means care for poor aged and disabled people would be managed by private insurance companies or county agencies with little experience with these people and with very little accountability or grievance procedure built in. The agency is paid a set amount per patient, so any care not delivered means more profit or less loss.

Worse yet, these private insurance companies and county agencies would also manage IHSS, Meals-on- Wheels, many senior centers, and the other vital services that let frail seniors and disabled people stay at home and not be put into institutions.

California started forcing the younger, non-disabled Medi-Cal-only population onto managed care last year. Already there are State hearings on patients separated from their doctors and cancer treatment and dialysis interrupted. Some of the worst Medi-Cal only managed care providers would manage care for the aged and disabled.

For aged or disabled patients, a workable relationship with the right doctor is important, yet patients could lose access to their doctors if they are arbitrarily assigned to a plan their doctor is not in.

People just getting by on the number of state-paid hours of home care could have those hours cut even more by the managed care plan and be forced into nursing homes. The State already [tried to institute] plans [for] a 7% cut in IHSS hours with no exemptions.

One might expect such basic decisions, with such life-changing medical and social consequences for so many people, would be slowly and carefully deliberated. Not so! Crucial elements are built into Gov. Brown’s budget. The State plans to start in 2013 and quickly expand to cover 8 counties and 80% of the people on both Medicare and Medi -Cal.